Doctor Who and the Enmity of the Daleks
by Mary Pseud
Summary: The Fourth Doctor and Romana II arrive on post-war Skaro, where a rejuvenated Davros and his Daleks have sinister plans for the future - and for the Doctor. AU from the 'Damnatio Memoriae' series; sequel to 'Dawn of the Daleks' and 'Hive of the Daleks'
1. Here and Back Again

The Doctor was, to be honest, in a bit of a snit.

He had just completed a vast and complicated task at the behest of the White Guardian, and just when he had got it all over and done with, the Time Lady travelling with him, Romanadvoratrelundar, had decided to regenerate. Just like that! Without a care in the world!

He could only think that he was becoming a good influence on her.

Frivolously, Romana asked his opinion of one body and then another, and finally settled on something short and blonde. He was a bit aggrieved, though, when she showed up dressed in a fair imitation of his own clothing, her new round face (someone else's face he pointed out) wearing Romana's serious expression a bit oddly, like a mask that did not quite fit.

And along with that, the Doctor's dog K-9 had developed laryngitis. Which was ridiculous for a robot, of course; the Doctor wondered who in their right mind would decide that when something went wrong in a K-9 unit, rather than have it flash a light or print out an error message or send out a radio signal, it would instead start having laryngitis. Technically K-9 didn't even have a larynx.

There was nothing to be done for the poor dog right now, though. "Well, are you quite finished yet?" he said to Romana, after she decided on a pink coat and white scarf.

"Yes," and the TARDIS shuddered as it landed. K-9 coughed futilely. "Where are we?"

"No idea, thanks to the randomiser. Which means the Black Guardian has no idea either." He ran a practiced eye over the sensor readouts. "Oxygen and water vapour optimal, temperature within the normal range, minimal radiation." He opened the viewscanner to the outside, and said in a tone of delight, "Oh look, trees!"

An orchard, from the looks of it. Trees heavy with fruit, planted in neat lines. Beyond them was a purplish mountain range. The angle of the sunlight and the fresh dew on the grass suggested it was morning.

"Looks lovely," opined Romana.

"Yes, but you know, I don't think it looks familiar. And yet somehow…No, I'm certain it's not familiar. Something new. Good." He hit the controls and opened the doors, then petted K-9 apologetically. "You'd better stay in here, boy. Wouldn't want you to get any sicker."

Outside, the orchard was even more impressive. All the trees' branches were carefully shaped and pruned. The ground below them was bare of fallen leaves or branches: there was nothing but thick, soft turf. It looked perfect for a stroll. A new world to explore - and for once, one that didn't promise imminent danger or death.

# # #

The Dalek waited.

Its current position was on the coast of the Skaro sea. Thal territory: it and its cohorts bore flags of truce. An unnecessary gesture, in its opinion, but it was a Dalek. It obeyed orders.

Its sensors detected a small wooden boat, nudging its way towards the coast through the thick morning mist. There were life forms on board: Kaled and Thal life forms. And although the boat was crudely made, there was at least one energy signature of advanced equipment on board.

While the Dalek monitored its current position, and charted the progress of the boat, it also listened to the conversation of its fellow travellers. They were not Daleks, and their words made little sense. Presumably the dialogue was some sort of pair-bonding behaviour. It listened, and filed the words away in its memory for future understanding.

"In my native tongue, sharp is a flavour, you know. Like a tart fruit."

"Hmmm…and what else?"

"Also musical notation."

"Musical notation?" The male laughed.

"And fine is a measure of thickness, and of quality, and also a punishment payment." The female then laughed.

The Dalek rotated its dome, slowly, and stared at the Kaled male and female, who were sitting on one of the two-wheeled machines they had ridden to get here. Why they would want to sit on the same machine, facing each other, arms and legs entwined, faces occasionally touching - that was also not understood.

The Dalek looked away, and spoke, "The ship is approaching the dock."

"Excellent," said the male, moving the female off his lap and standing with her at his side. "Any weapons signatures?"

"Shaped metal. One energy source." The Dalek considered what else these 'sailors' might have. "Possible non-powered, non-metallic projectile weapons."

"An arrow with a bone point, say."

"Hullo!" said a voice out of the blank greyness of the mist. "What depth?"

"Advance twenty ship-lengths to establish visual contact," rasped the Dalek.

"What was that?" The Dalek's distinctive tone was apparently unknown to the voice.

The male replied to the ocean. "Ahead slow, you're almost at the dock. The bottom is dredged out to the shoreline; you're in no danger of grounding. As soon as we see you, we'll throw you a line."

When the ship finally appeared out of the mists, it was small and battered. It had broad cloth sails, and oar-ports along its sides. The male at the bow of the ship was heavily bearded, and the beard was mostly white with age. Before it might have been blond. He took the rope that was thrown to him, and the boat was quickly hauled parallel to the long wooden dock.

The men on the boat, the sailors, stared up at the Dalek with frightened eyes. Men in rough worn clothes, cuffs stiff with salt. Refugees from the mainland, who had fled the war and made their lives on the islands of Skaro. They should fear, of course. The Dalek was their superior in every way.

The female on the dock spoke first. "Captain Gre, I presume?"

The bearded man grunted. His eyes darted from the Dalek to the Kaleds, and to the large heap of wooden crates that were also on the dock. "I'm Gre."

"I am Security Liaison called Esselle, and this is Security Commander Nyder. With a Dalek security escort."

Nyder nodded his head, eyes cool behind his glasses.

"I believe you have passengers of interest? Two passengers?" she asked.

"I'm here," said a man, moving to Gre's side. He was young, but grief had marked his face in harsh lines. "I'm," he choked, "I'm so sorry. So very sorry…"

"It will be all right, Rett," she said soothingly, reaching out to take his hand - and stopping, as Gre's arm thrust between them.

"We had a deal," he said harshly. "Him and t'other one, for food, and tools."

Esselle leaned back, and delicately shrugged. "The supplies are here. Send your men to look at them." She looked unconcerned as the sailors clambered off the ship and went to inspect the boxes.

The Dalek watched the sailors, closely, using all its senses. Some of them had knives in their belts, hilts and blades worn with much use. The Dalek knew that Nyder and Esselle's leather outer garments could stop a knife; its main concern would be to blast down attackers without harming its allies.

One of the sailors returned to the ship, and whispered in Gre's ear. The Captain's eyes widened alarmingly.

"He says there's more than we can stow on board!" he snapped.

"Well, we thought you should be able to pick and choose," she said. "Anything you do not take on this trip can either be held specifically for you, or in trust for anyone who wants to depart for your islands and needs supplies."

Gre seemed to consider this, then turned and gestured sharply. Two sailors moved to the mast, and started untying the man who was bound there, his head drooping forward. Then Gre stepped back to the rail, and stared at Esselle.

"You look like her, y'know. Are you her sister?"

"We are the Daughters of Skaro; we are all sisters."

"Well, how about that." Gre's brow was furrowed. "I tell you, when Rett showed up with his wife, well, I thought it would be the end of everythin'. That we'd spend all our time fightin' over her instead of workin'.

"But Ellsa was - real nice. And she worked hard, not as hard as a man maybe but as hard as she could. She and Rett brought a radio, and unbreakable fishin' line, and sewing needles, and just half a hundred things we needed. And she was smart, and she was beautiful." Gre looked at the woman on the dock. Her long dark brown hair, her sharp nose and dark eyes. "Beautiful too," he repeated, and scuffled his feet.

He dropped his arm, and Rett leaped off the ship in one movement and went into Esselle's embrace. "So sorry," he was still whispering. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a round metal sphere (the Dalek scanned it, and determined it to be the previously detected energy source: a compact memory recorder of Reflectionist manufacture). "I did like you said, I touched this to her after he, after we found her. We buried her. I'm so sorry."

"It will be-"

"It's not all right!" he half-shouted. "You trusted me with Ellsa, with her life, and I got her murdered!" Then he turned and glared at the bound man who had just been dragged to the rail.

The bound man had been clean-shaven, but he had not been allowed near a blade in some days, it seemed. His cheeks and upper lip were grey with stubble, and his face was grey with fear.

"She's one of them!" the prisoner shouted, lunging against the ropes that still held him. "One of those creatures!"

"We creatures, as you call us, ended the war," Esselle retorted. "I recognise you. Commander, would you like to make official identification?"

Nyder stepped to the edge of the dock, and the bound man writhed in the grip of the sailors, desperately trying to get loose. He examined the prisoner's face as though trying to decide where to place the first cut.

"Identity confirmed. Captain Gre, do you require help in loading these supplies?"

"No."

"We have made arrangement with the Thals. This dock is yours for three days, in case you want to unpack or repack any of the cases." Or inspect them for hidden bombs and such. "We will take your passengers now. There are people eager to see them." He stepped closer, and looked down at the bound man, who'd been slung over the railing and onto the dock as though he were a bundle of cloth. The prisoner rolled frantically, but Nyder's boot prevented him from, say, dropping into the ocean and filling his lungs with seawater.

The Commander leaned forward a trifle, and almost smiled. "Hello, Councilman Mogran."

# # #

The Doctor and Romana were walking, taking in the alien sights and smells, and noting the signs of the planet's unseen inhabitants: neatly trimmed grass, benches of some polished white stone, a glittering fountain dripping with flowers. It was a beautiful world, and it was strange that they hadn't seen any signs of people.

"Look here!" said Romana, and the Doctor joined her at a tree that had fallen, breaking the orderly row. It had fallen recently, from the look of it: the broken trunk was still weeping sap. Romana was looking at the inside of the stump. "It's all hollow inside."

The Doctor looked, and then looked again. What looked from the outside to be a solid tree trunk was revealed as a delicate web of nearly transparent material, supporting a solid shell just inside the bark. The Doctor took out his sonic screwdriver, but it couldn't distort the strands. "An assembled matrix."

"What?" asked Romana.

"These trees aren't really trees: they're live bark and wood grown over a shell of artificial material."

"Why not just grow the trees naturally?" Romana asked.

"Oh, I don't know…A speed gardening competition?"

Romana gave the Doctor a look; he looked back with an innocent expression. Overhead a bird sang: the Doctor's eyes could not determine its species, but there seemed to be something familiar about the shape of its bill. Then with a flick of red wings, it was gone.

The bird was going to a birdhouse. It perched at the entrance, and as it had been carefully trained to do, it raised its head, just enough so that the pinhead-sized metal button on the top of its head would make contact with the metal rim. And it thought.

It thought about what it had seen recently: trees, sun, animals, insects, moss, a new blue box, other birds, and new walking-things with interesting nest-building material on their top ends. Then it waited. It knew, from its training, that when it touched its head to the rim and thought of new things it had seen, a hatch would open and things-to-eat would come out.

The hatch opened. And things-to-eat came out. Lots of them. Lots and lots! The bird chirped, and started to feast.

# # #

"They are here. Prepare to intercept. Contact all units in the field. Begin the transmissions."

"We obey."

# # #

The travellers had found the edge of the orchard; a steep rocky cliff sliced downwards at their feet, and the great expanse of bare ground beyond was almost blinding white; they could feel the heat off of it on their faces, warmer than the sunlight.

It was what was moving on that white plain that made the Doctor fall into a crouch, and grab Romana by the ends of her tasselled white scarf and drag her down as well.

The plain was dotted with black circular objects, with a metallic gleam to their edges. It was hard to judge exactly how large they were; they lined up as far as the horizon. Some of them seemed to be unfinished, with bits of their outsides lying about or being manoeuvred into position by machines, or by other things.

It was those other things that told the Doctor exactly how big the black disc-shaped objects were. The other things looked like tiny rounded cones, studded with half-spheres in lines along the bottom, and crowned with a dome that bore a metallic eyestalk. Each cone also had a sucker-tipped arm, and a weapon; some of them had different arms attached, with specialised equipment. But they all had weapons.

"Those are Daleks, aren't they?" said Romana. "I recognise them from the Academy lessons…they're a lot smaller than I thought they were."

"No, they're farther away than you think. This must be a salt flat, a dried-up ocean. Those are Daleks, and they're building spaceships. Probably a war fleet."

"How do you know it's a war fleet?"

The Doctor frowned massively. "Because Daleks are building it…ah!" He was staring wide-eyed at the purple mountain range, finally recognising it. "Drammankin!"

"What's a drammankin?"

"Those are the Drammankin Mountains, and this is - come on, we have to get back to the TARDIS." Suiting actions to words, the Doctor crept away from the edge of the cliff on hands and knees, then rose and half-dragged Romana after him.

"Why do we have to get back?" she said, half-running to keep up with his long loping strides.

"This is Skaro. The Daleks' home world. I've been here before; too many times."

"But why would Daleks have an orchard?" she protested. "They're war machines, creatures that live only to kill. They don't even eat!"

"Doctor."

"What?" he snapped over his shoulder at the woman's voice, irritably. Romana could be rather slow to react sometimes.

"I didn't say anything!" she protested.

"What?" he said, and turned, and saw the four figures standing behind Romana.


	2. Prisoners

The Dalek and its cohorts were travelling along the sole road between Thal and Kaled territory when the message came in. The Kaleds stopped and listened to the radio message even as the Dalek picked it up; the mountains must have blocked the transmission before they came through the pass.

"- units. Artron energy surge in Section Five-G. All available units to converge on suspected time machine. Hold any occupants for questioning and processing. Repeat, all available units. Artron energy-"

"Dalek unit, prepare to redirect!" Nyder shouted, opening the wheeled pod that had been clamped to the Dalek's shell and making sure that the safety straps for the passengers were secure. Mogran looked silently furious; Rett looked alarmed.

"What's going on?" Rett asked.

"I'm sending you ahead to the Dome without us. There will be Security forces waiting at the other end, so Mogran is to arrive in one piece if you please," he said to Rett. He closed the pod's lid. "Dalek unit, we will intercept in Section Five-G. Proceed to the Kaled Dome. Maximum speed!"

The Dalek seemed to leap for the horizon, its levipropulsion system sending it snapping along the ground like a thrown stone. A faint wail sounded behind it, as Mogran felt the air squeezed out of him by the sudden acceleration.

Paying no attention, Nyder and Esselle headed towards Five-G, their motorcycles soaring over smooth pavement and well-raked sod with equal ease. The flags of truce snapping from their sleeves were pulled loose and stuffed inside their jackets. With a flick of gloved fingers, their vehicles went into stealth mode, running silently on battery power. They listened as more detailed reports and instructions came in via their helmet radios, and spoke to each other over the radio circuit, making their plans.

# # #

There were four people standing behind Romana, two men and two women in plain green garments. The men were tall and blond, the women a bit shorter. One of them had short-cut sandy blonde hair, and her hard face was familiar.

"Bettan?" Bettan was a Thal woman that the Doctor had met, when he was here before. She was a member of the Thal government. But the Thals and the Kaleds were long-term opponents, so either the Daleks had taken over Thal territory, or…

"Yes, Doctor," Bettan said, with a slight smile. "You remember me."

The Doctor looked from side to side, through the endless-seeming rows of orchard trees. Not exactly the easiest place to sneak up on someone. He looked at the four Thals again, and noticed something a bit indistinct about their outlines.

Then a breeze sent Romana's scarf flying, and it swung right through Bettan's leg, and back.

"You're not really here, are you?" he said.

"No. This is a psychic projection. Doctor, we would like to ask for your help."

"You weren't so eager to accept it last time." That memory was bitter: he'd warned the Thals about what the Kaled scientist Davros was creating: the ultimate war weapon, the Daleks. And the Thals had disregarded his warnings. They had made their own truce with the Kaleds, but the Doctor was sure it could not last forever.

"We have watched the Daleks as they grew stronger, as they built more and more powerful weapons. Now they are building a great fleet, which they say is for exploration. We do not know whether their intentions are peaceful or not. They have built automated telepathy jammers, and installed them throughout Kaled territory. Our telepaths cannot see their intentions."

"Maybe they just like privacy?" suggested Romana.

Bettan appeared not to notice those words. "We cannot approach closer to the Dome than this, or the jammers will disrupt our psychic projection. But-"

Bettan held her hands out cupped in front of her, as though holding some small object. The other three Thals reached out as well, their hands around hers, and all four faces wore an identical look of intense concentration.

There was a little cloud in Bettan's palms, which solidified into a small metal cube, palm-sized. The Doctor put out a hand, hesitantly, and was not quite surprised when the little box levitated into his grip.

"This is a counter-jammer. If it is taken to Dal, or the Kaled Dome, or even the Bunker and then activated by pulling the green tab, the jamming will be neutralised. We will be able to see what the Daleks are really planning. Negotiate with our new knowledge; find a political solution to this. We do not want war, Doctor, believe us!" Bettan's face was strained with emotion. "More than anything else, we do not want war again!"

The four Thals were growing more transparent. Bettan's voice was the last thing they heard, urgently speaking but barely louder than a whisper, "We need your help. Help us, Doctor…"

There was nothing in front of the two travellers now, except for a long row of trees, and empty grass.

The Doctor held the counter-jammer in one hand, and promptly rummaged around in his pockets for his sonic screwdriver. Extracting it, he started to unfasten the casing of the box.

"What are you doing?" asked Romana.

"The Thals were at war with the Kaleds for a thousand years, and they might still have some hard feelings between them. I just want to make sure that this is actually what they say it is." He opened the metal casing, and ran a practiced eye over the internal components.

"Very nice," he commented. "Piezoelectric power supply to escape detection; redundant resonance coils, shielding in the casing. No sign of explosives. Yes, a very nicely made little counter-jammer." He put the casing back on, making sure that the green metal tab stayed free in the appropriate slot, and started to fasten the casing back down.

"Are you going to do what she asked? I thought we were leaving!"

"Oh, well, we will leave. Certainly. But surely there's no harm in just strolling a bit closer to the Dome, and then turning this on."

"Why not use the TARDIS?"

"What? After all that work I put into adding the randomiser into her circuits? She'd never forgive me if I took it out now." He looked around, and then pointed back the way they had come. "But we need to get out into the open air first. We need to see the Dome."

They headed in the general direction of the TARDIS, but found their way blocked by a great white ball. It was swelling up out of the ground, apparently bumping or nuzzling the fallen tree trunk they had seen earlier.

"What is that?" said Romana, pulling her coat closer around her.

"Fungus, I think. Probably reacting to the broken tree; the Thals bioengineered the fungus, then traded it to the Kaleds. All part of the Peace Accords, the end of the war. I suspect it only reacts to whatever it's been designed for-"

The great white ball bobbled a bit in place, and then began to slowly roll towards the two travellers.

"-which appears to include movement. Here, Romana!" He grabbed her arm and pulled her sideways, between the trees; the fungus ball paused, unable to fit through the gap.

"Be seeing you!" said the Doctor with a broad grin, moving on. The fungus-ball did not seem to be able to roll very quickly, and they soon outpaced it.

"Do you hear something?" asked Romana. "Sort of a whistling sound?"

"Maybe," and then the Doctor shouted with surprise.

Something had just come softly and silently between the trees, faster than the eye could follow. Black and low to the ground, it had zipped past and grabbed Romana, who barely had time to scream before she was tossed face-down across something hard that vibrated under her stomach.

With a sudden roar a motorcycle came leaping through the trees, lunging towards him. The Doctor almost fell backwards, but caught himself. He looked upwards at the whistling of something moving very quickly through the air, and the sound of metallic voices, and saw falling objects.

The Daleks fell to earth in a circle around the Doctor, like knives being plunged into flesh. Leaves showered down around them from their passage. Rather than sinking into the grass, they hovered a bit above it, droning over and over, "Do not move! You will be exterminated! You are our prisoner! You will make no attempt to escape!"

"Oh, shut up," said the Doctor crossly. He was more than used to the Daleks' standards of conversation. "Romana!"

The thing that had snatched Romana was another motorcycle, now idling towards him, with a rather indignant Romana wriggling to get loose from the rider's firm grip. As the motorcycle came to a stop, she finally managed to roll off and immediately retreated to the Doctor's side.

"Electrical engines, I imagine," said the Doctor cheerily. "And recorded mechanical motor noises, as a safety feature."

The cyclists were both wearing black helmets with tinted visors that completely obscured their faces, along with black leather jackets, jodhpurs and boots. The one that had scooped up Romana, a small figure almost dwarfed by the motorcycle, opened the helmet and smiled, teeth bright in her face. A sharp-nosed face with dark brows and alarmingly steady hazel eyes.

"Hello again," said the woman. A Kaled Reflectionist; they all wore the same face. But this one was a bit short for a Kaled Reflectionist, which meant she was probably - Security Liaison Esselle.

The Doctor and Romana turned, to face the barrel of an energy blaster being pointed at them by the other rider. The face revealed by his helmet's opened visor, narrow and pale and wearing glasses, was also familiar. Unfortunately.

Security Commander Nyder said merely, "Welcome back." And his eyes slitted with satisfaction.

# # #

The two Kaleds made a report of who they had caught over their helmet radios, and then made it clear that either the travellers rode with them to the Dome, or the Daleks would drag them there.

Romana managed to look beautifully condescending as she deigned to mount behind Esselle on the motorcycle. But the Doctor's hearts still quailed for her. Of all the perils in the universe, he would never have wanted her to endure the Daleks, or their sinister progenitors and allies, the Kaleds.

The Doctor mounted up behind Nyder; he was tall enough that he could look right over the top of the Kaled man's helmeted head. He squashed his already rather squashed hat into one pocket, and tossed his scarf together into a bundle between them. "Don't want to do like poor Isadora," he muttered to himself.

"Hold on," Nyder said in a slightly muffled tone, and they zoomed off with the Daleks in close attendance behind.

This trip gave the visitors a wonderful view of the rebuilt Skaro, and while it was a bit too tailored for the Doctor's tastes, it was quite an impressive transformation. The poisoned, blasted soil of the Wastelands was now rolling fields of grass or long rows of crops; were it not for the Daleks that that moved here and there about the landscape on their own mysterious tasks, it would have struck him as an admirable pleasure garden.

The Doctor knew better. There were snakes in this garden: dangerous ones.

Since the motorcycle was running in silent mode, the Doctor tried to make conversation with his captor. "I suppose you're taking us to Davros?" he half-shouted over the rushing wind of their passage.

"Correct," Nyder informed him. "He has standing orders of what to do if you ever returned to attack us again."

"Attack?" Romana and I were just out for a walk!" he protested.

"And of all the planets in all the galaxies, you just happened to choose Skaro?"

The Dome was coming into view now, a great white arc against the sky, seeming too tremendous to be artificial. It was like a glacier with a city embedded in it, half-visible through the translucent surface. The Doctor thought of the small Thal device now riding in his coat pocket, but obviously if he activated it now, and dropped it, it would be smashed to bits. Better to find some place to hide it in the Dome itself, if he could. Someplace where the Daleks would not find it and deactivate it at once.

# # #

Inside the TARDIS, K-9 was silent, waiting. Not that he had much choice: fair amounts of his motor circuitry, not to mention his brain, were sitting outside of his casing. If he had been fully assembled, he might have been able to receive a signal that was being deliberately sent on his internal communication wavelength, over and over again. A precisely tuned message, keyed to be read by a certain customised array of circuitry.

But even if he had been able to receive it, he probably would have filtered it out as static. It meant nothing to him.

# # #

"Prepare to initiate the alternate plan. The K-9 unit is not responding."

"We obey."

# # #

Inside the Dome, the Doctor and Romana went willingly enough through the long steel-clad corridors to a massive pair of doors; but protested as Nyder and Esselle hauled out handcuffs. With a sharp gesture, Nyder dismissed the Daleks and summoned Kaled guards, who held the two travellers still as they were cuffed to long wooden poles that went across their shoulders, holding their arms outstretched to the sides. Their scarves were carefully wrapped around those poles, binding them decoratively.

The Doctor spat, "Oh, this is ridiculous!" as he tentatively tested the bonds.

"Davros does like to look at beautiful things," said Esselle, tipping one finger under Romana's chin and raising her face a little bit to the light. Romana suffered this touch, barely. The great doors noiselessly rolled open, and Romana and the Doctor were marched inside, their captor's grip on the pole between their shoulderblades moving them along like packages.

The room they entered was large, and dominated by a massive chair on a dais; it looked like a throne room. But the centre of attention was not the chair, or the people standing in a loose cluster behind it, but the man who was in front of it. Or rather, half a man.

Davros: his withered face and sole arm and torso embedded in a massive mechanical life support system that replaced the lower half of his body - and looked far too much like the lower half of a Dalek. A vision implant in his forehead glowed an eerie blue.

The Doctor was bug-eyed with astonishment. He had seen the mind transfer that had put Davros into a new, young body. Had something gone wrong? It couldn't be; he'd met Davros, talked to him in the new body. This must be-

Nyder stepped in front of him and touched one gloved finger to his own lips, and then to the Doctor's. "Be silent or I'll gag you with that scarf," he whispered, before turning to watch the tableau being played out.

Davros' chair was moving in little jerks towards a man who crouched on the floor, snivelling. An older man with white hair, dressed in worn, patched clothing.

"Councilman Mogran," Davros finally rasped; his voice was the same eerie half-mechanical whisper that the Doctor remembered. "Assassin."

"No, Davros, please!" Mogran tried to get to his feet; but the guards on each side of him kept him on his knees.

"You sent your traitors into the Bunker with a bomb to destroy me! To destroy all my work!" Davros said, his voice rising into an even more mechanical shriek.

"No, Davros, please, it was the Daughters, I had to destroy them! They had - they'd taken over the military, the government was about to collapse, I had to save my people!"

"Save them from the Daughters, who were created solely to end the war? Save my people - from me?"

"Davros, please-"

"I will decide your punishment later, Mogran. Be well aware that I will give the matter my full attention." The prisoner howled as he was dragged away, past the two travellers and out the doors, which closed with a heavy thudding noise.

There was silence: from the hunched figure of Davros, from the Doctor and Romana and their guards, from the men and women in robes who were standing behind the white throne. Then, a familiar sound.

Clapping. Applause. The people behind the throne were clapping, and Nyder and Esselle were clapping as well, the crisp slap of their gloves echoing against the high ceiling.

While everyone applauded, the Doctor peered over his own shoulder: it didn't look like there were any guards behind him, and he could see the controls to open the door - he thought. But first he had to get rid of his bonds.

The cuffs had been wrapped back and around his wrists, and he thought that he might be able to shove the pole loose from the loop of the handcuff's chain, freeing him and giving him an improvised weapon in one go. Carefully, he reached out with his fingers, his hand half-hidden by the scarf, and started to shift the pole sideways.

Two of the Kaleds came over to the figure of Davros and began to examine it, as though looking at an interesting bit of machinery. Davros did not move or speak; he just sat there, like a - like a puppet, with its strings cut.

And here came the puppeteer.

A man stepped forward, a slight man whose dark hair was barely threaded with white. He wore a white jacket and pants somewhere between medical and military in cut. There was a presence to him, an aura of fierce energy that made the others move subtly away, incline their head to him. They should, because this was Davros.

"The test was perfect, Kavell. My congratulations," said the real Davros, vigorously shaking the hand of one of the men. "Take it away for maintenance."

"It?" The Doctor raised his voice, and everyone in the chamber looked at him - except for the withered thing that was apparently not Davros.

"Ah, Commander. You said that you were bringing them here." Davros paced closer, his dark eyes bright with curiosity. "A new companion, I see. This must be Romana." He looked her up and down, as though evaluating her pink coat and blonde hair. "The Doctor does have such varied tastes. Every time it's a new young lady."

"Every time?" said Romana, her brow creasing.

Davros turned to his other captive. "To answer your question - it, Doctor, is a vat-grown clone of myself, artificially aged and appropriately - mutilated. Imprinted with a rudimentary copy of my personality for verisimilitude. We've had this problem with time travellers, you see."

"Time travellers." The Doctor's voice was flat.

"Yes, they keep showing up and trying to assassinate me - recruit me to work for them - all manner of nonsense. Fortunately they all seem to be looking for me in my support chair, so we distract them with - that." He gestured without looking to where the two men were wheeling the half-figure out of the room.

The Doctor could see that; if the Reflectionist's intervention had changed the time line, there would still be people in transit as is were, shielded from the changes by their time travel machines, who would arrive literally from another universe. One where Davros had never left his chair.

Davros looked off into the distance as though remembering something. "Once a group of Daleks arrived: to save me, or convert me into a Dalek perhaps. They were led by a Dalek named Omega, of all the perverse things: why would a Dalek need a name?"

"Can't imagine," the Doctor said blandly. The pole was moving across his shoulders; the end of it was under the scarf, and he was shoving it along with the back of his hand now. He had to be careful; if he moved too fast someone would notice, and if he dropped the pole Nyder would probably snatch it from him. And he didn't have much time.

Davros' attention returned to his prisoners. "Well, they made off with the first clone - although it's not going to do them much good. Nothing more than a bundle of conditioned reflexes and phrases, with a grossly simplified version of my own memories - really, it's like talking to a machine."

He tilted his head. "But it is a machine that I have spent considerable effort in creating. I would hate to think that my labour had been in vain. Perhaps it would be best if I found out exactly who you have discussed your little sojourns here with." Davros' face suddenly emptied of emotion, and was cold and blank as stone. "Now," he ordered.

Just then, the pole came loose. With a lunge the Doctor had it free in one hand, and was shoving Romana back against the doorway. Quickly she twisted her own hand, reaching for the door controls while fighting free of her bonds. He spun his improvised staff, and watched as both Nyder and Esselle fell into fighting stance. They were focussing on their prisoners, reaching for their weapons. The other people in the room shouted or moved forward to defend Davros.

"No shooting, I want them alive!" Davros snapped as he retreated. "Call the Daughters!"

Esselle shrilled a wordless cry, Eyiyiyiyiyiyi! The cry was cut off when Romana's pole suddenly flew like a spear and took her in the upper chest; she fell back, coughing, and the two captives ducked through the door. With a twist of his sonic screwdriver, the Doctor fused the door controls, and they ran.


	3. Come Dancing

Inside the white room, the escape of the Doctor and his companion did not seem much of a cause for alarm. Davros strolled rather than ran towards a vidscreen with a control panel in front of it. The screen lit up, to show a stark Dome corridor, white striped with red. The Doctor and Romana pelted down it. They were running hard, scarves flying, fists pumping, and then they stopped.

The travellers stopped. They froze. Their flying limbs hung in mid-air as though encased in glass: the Doctor's right foot was barely touching the ground as he hung suspended. Frozen in time.

"Well, that was simple enough," Davros decided aloud. "A clean capture with the stasis field. Now we just bring in the scanning equipment and-"

"It didn't work," Esselle interrupted, with a glum note in her voice. "Look."

Davros looked and his eyes opened wide.

There were colours appearing on the screen, out of nowhere. Bars and stripes of multicoloured energy seeming to flow outwards from the trapped figures. Which was impossible of course: a stasis field froze time. Nothing in a stasis field could move, not objects, not people, not even light.

But the strange energies continued to move, and the two figures moved as well. Slowly, the Doctor's right food touched the ground: slowly, Romana's scarf rippled behind her. They were moving faster now, labouring forward through the energy field as though it was thinning mud.

"No," said Davros, and a huge smile suddenly flashed alight on his face. The smile of a man who sees his world turned upside-down, and wonders if he can fly. "No, no, no!" he screamed in triumph, fists clenched. "They can't do that!"

"How are they doing that?" asked Nyder in dismay.

"The Doctor is a Time Lord. And Romana as well it seems," said Esselle, staring intently at the screen. "And they're out."

The two intruders ran deeper into the Dome, and vanished.

"Find them." Davros' eyes were still wide, and sweat beaded his upper lip suddenly. "Find them for me, but don't harm them, not a hair on their heads! I've got to examine them, test them, find out how they did that! The power they have, it must be mine." He repeated the last word, hungrily. "Mine."

# # #

The Doctor and Romana dashed down the white Dome corridors, turning down one and then another at random, until the Doctor suddenly skidded to a halt. He cupped a hand to his ear, then shouted "This way!" and dashed to his left.

'Why?" demanded Romana. "Is this the way out?"

"Not yet, but it's near - here!" He opened a door and music welled out, bright and lively with a strong drumbeat under it. A man was singing along with the music, something about a star and peace. And along with the music came laughter and the heat and sound of moving bodies.

"Inside!" and he dragged her through. The room was large, and still dimly lit, and filled with hundreds of Kaled men (and some women), all dancing together in pairs or circles, elbow to elbow. At one side of the room was a low stage with instruments and microphones. The Doctor had heard the music when he had seen the Dance before, and he knew that there was a Dome exit somewhere near the Dance. They could hide in here to break their trail, then leave. The only problem right now was camouflaging his partner.

"Here, put this on. Tuck your hair under your coat," ordered the Doctor, pulling his own hat out and clapping it onto her head.

"Why?" she asked, twisting her hair up and around her neck to hide it. Following the Doctor's lead, she touched her elbows to his and followed as he backed into the crowd of dancers, hunching over a little to disguise his height.

"You look Thal. The Thals and the Kaleds are long-time enemies."

"Look, can you explain exactly what's going on here?" she demanded. "Who are all these people, and what do they have to do with the Daleks?"

"Of course, but keep your voice down, and keep dancing." A quick sideways look showed that plenty of the other dancers were moving together with their elbows apart, faces nearly touching; so the Doctor leaned close and half-whispered in Romana's ear.

"These are the Kaleds, the race who will create the Daleks - or rather, their descendants will evolve into Daleks. Davros is their most brilliant scientist: he discovered what his race would become, and turned those mutated new life-forms into weapons."

Roman's eyes darted left and right under the hat brim, looking at the crowd of smiling, dancing young men and women around her. "These are the Daleks' - parents?"

"They're nastier than they look. The Time Lord High Council sent me here, when Davros was first creating the Daleks, to alter them from the very beginning. But somebody beat me to it."

"Who?"

"The Reflectionists; they said that they followed my energy trail, but…They got here first, infiltrated Davros' Bunker and then the Kaled Dome. Took over the government, and ended the war with the Thals - they infiltrated them as well. They're growing copies of themselves, fully mature bodies in tanks; and transferring memories and personalities via metal neural arrays."

The singer onstage paused, and then launched into another song; this one slower and sadder, something about leaving behind all your friends, going away to war. The Kaleds would certainly have enough songs like that, thought the Doctor. The dancers around the two travellers danced slower to the new tempo.

The Doctor continued. "I suppose they taught you at the Academy that the Reflectionists were harmless, eh?"

"They hardly mentioned them, actually," Romana said stiffly.

"Well they're not even a little harmless. They moved Davros from a crippled body into a new one, rebuilt this society to their own ends. And they have more changes in store for the Kaleds. I believe that the Reflectionists are planning to elevate Davros to the trans-sentient level. To forcefully lift him, and themselves, into the realm of the Eternals."

"Surely that's not possible?"

"My research says that it might be. The Reflectionists may even have done it before; there are mass disappearances associated with worlds they inhabit. And in a very few accounts, I found a word used, again and again, to describe what had happened. Harvest.

"The harvest requires soul energy. More energy than any one person or entity can control. Davros and the Reflectionists could be planning to destroy the entire population of Skaro, focus all the energies of their death somehow and ascend. Like burning fuel to make a hot-air balloon rise."

"What does this have to do with the Daleks?"

"The Daleks want to make war on the Eternals." The Doctor raised his voice a little bit; someone else had apparently joined the singer on the stage, and the duet was louder. He turned his back to the stage, and went on. "They want to ascend as well. And I shudder to think what they might do to achieve it. They could exterminate whole planetary populations, entire galaxies, in a futile quest for transcendence."

"And what if it isn't futile? What if Davros and the Daleks do become - Eternals? Like the Black and the White Guardian?" Romana's voice stumbled, and she whispered, "Doctor?"

A hand was at the Doctor's elbow. "Mind if I cut in?" asked Esselle, and without hesitation she slid between him and his partner, sweeping Romana aside elbow to elbow. The Doctor half-turned to protest, and found himself face to eyestalk with a Dalek.

"Well, I'm certainly not asking you to dance!" he said cuttingly, and out of the corner of his eye saw who was singing on stage.

It was Ravon. Teacher Ravon, formerly General Ravon: unmistakable with his round face and red headband. And the man in black beside him was Nyder. Side by side they sang, microphones held to their lips. Ravon sang with smooth control, while Nyder was a bit stiffer, but this was clearly not the first time they had sung together. Nyder's free hand pointed directly at the Doctor; he must have stepped up on stage in order to see over the crowd and point him out to the Daleks.

"Goodbye," Ravon and Nyder sang together, the last chorus of the song, "goodbye…goodbye." And the dancers stopped and applauded, as the Daleks hauled the prisoners away.

# # #

Davros was waiting in the corridor outside, nearly dancing from foot to foot with impatience. "I saw you!" he snapped at the Doctor. "You walked through my stasis field! You just walked through it!"

"Well," the Doctor shrugged a little, as though abashed by his own abilities.

"A stasis field freezes time, absolutely. I have tested them extensively, and I have never seen anything that violates the laws of physics that a stasis field obeys. And you - just - walked - through - it!" Davros' eyes were huge as they darted from the Doctor to Romana, and back again. "Both of you!"

He leaned forward, fists clenched. "How?"

"Well," said the Doctor, smiling in a disarming way, "it would take a great deal of time to explain."

"I have nothing but time." To the guards, he ordered, "Get them to the Bunker, now. The interrogation and examination will begin at once." And as the prisoners were more securely bound and hauled off, protesting, they did not notice Davros pulling a length of M-class cable from its wall socket and touching it to his head, sending out some message over the wire.

# # #

The Doctor gritted his teeth: it was practically the only thing that he could move. Chest and arms and legs and head were strapped to a heavy metal chair in the Bunker Interrogation Centre, and Romana was bound in a similar chair next to him. The Bunker was a military laboratory, created by Davros to house his experiments, including the Daleks. Armoured, guarded, impossible to escape from - although come to think of it, he had escaped from it in the past.

Fortunately, Davros had been so excited to get the travellers here that neither of them had been searched. The Thal counter-jammer dug into his side, and he looked forward to activating it - once he had found a way for Romana and himself to escape afterwards.

Davros was here in person to perform the tests, his hands flying over the control panels. His eyes were bright, too bright, and the Doctor wondered what sort of theories about Time Lords were forming in his mind - and what he might do to his prisoners to prove them.

What worried him more was that there was nobody in the Interrogation Centre except for Nyder, Esselle and Davros, plus two Daleks on guard duty. None of the Kaled Elite, none of the other Reflectionists.

The Doctor studied Esselle's impassive features, so like Commander Nyder's in their set. Had she been corrupted by her contact with Davros - or had all the Reflectionists? Was she a part of Davros' master plans, or a prospective part of the harvest: one of the thousands or millions of people who might be sacrificed, in a ritual to rival the Aztecs at their worst, in an attempt to elevate Davros.

Romana was twitching in her bonds; one of the Daleks had rolled over and was peering at her with its eyestalk, examining the new alien. Romana seemed painfully aware that the Dalek could exterminate her in an instant.

"You are stressing the subjects," said Davros without looking up. "Dalek units will take up guard positions outside this room."

"We obey," the Daleks droned as one, and left.

"Don't you ever get tired of hearing nothing but Yes, Davros, As you wish, Davros, and We obey?" the Doctor asked.

"No," said Davros with a mildly puzzled air. Then one of his machines started pinging urgently, and he regarded it for a few seconds before pushing a button and silencing it.

"Interesting," he said, drawing the word out. "These neural patterns are fascinating; they're nearly as complex as the Prime's! Run a compatibility test."

The Doctor gritted his teeth again. This could go on all night.


	4. Shattered

"Log the results," ordered Davros, and then jumped. Both his prisoners had suddenly shouted, lunging against their bonds. Now they stared at their captors, wide-eyed, and their captors stared back.

"What?" Davros demanded. He looked over the machines' readings: the prisoners' blood pressures were elevated, their interesting dual hearts were beating noticeably faster, hormone levels up…ah.

"What did you do?" said Romana, in a frighteningly raw-sounding voice. Her face was white to the lips, in shocking contract to the Doctor's red-flushed features. "What was that?" Her eyes were darting all around the room, and over herself, as though she was surprised to be here. As though she might remember being - somewhere else.

Davros was scribbling something on a clipboard; finally he looked up and said, "That was an electronic test of your personal compatibility. After all, if we're going to keep you here, we should know if you can be housed together."

"It sets up a sympathetic resonance in your minds, and analyses the results," said Nyder flatly. Then his voice changed, as he went on, "We've tested it on Kaleds and on Thals, and because of the Thals' telepathic abilities we registered some very interesting psychic congruencies. Shared hallucinations." He leaned forward a trifle. "Your species wouldn't happen to be telepathic, would they?"

Romana lunged against her bonds, ignoring the pain. Lunged again, as the three Kaleds laughed at the look of unwilling arousal on her face and her trembling body. Laughed at the Doctor's tormented expression. Davros laughed broadly; Esselle and Nyder's chuckles were as cold as they were.

"Quite a useful reading, then," said Davros when he stopped laughing. "You are clearly very attached to each other." His eyes narrowed. "I think that the preliminary physical readings are finished; it will take me some time to evaluate them properly. And you will want to be well-rested for the next round of questioning. We'll put you somewhere safe."

"If we walked out through a stasis field, how do you know we won't just walk out through the walls?" said Romana defiantly.

"Perhaps if we hamstrung you first-" suggested Nyder.

"That won't be necessary, Commander." The Doctor's voice was sharp.

"For the moment." Nyder raised his chin a fraction. "We should see you to your - rest, then." His fingers made a minute gesture to Esselle, who turned and touched a cable from the wall to her head.

# # #

Rest was of course not in guest quarters; they were left in a bleak metal cell. A few minutes of frantic searching made it clear that this was not one of the cells with a Reflectionist escape tunnel leading into it. While the Doctor searched, Romana sat on the bench, fists clenched in front of her and eyes locked on the floor.

"Well, that's not it either," said the Doctor pessimistically, taking his finger off the last rivet in the row. Then he paused and looked at Romana. He went and sat next to her, gingerly, ready to back off if she didn't want to be touched.

She turned and buried her face against his shoulder, and he patted her on the back.

"It didn't happen," he said, trying to calm her. And calm himself as well; reassure himself that their shared psychic experience had not wounded either of them too deeply. He was still trying to come to grips with that part of himself that had wanted Romana helpless before him, and more disturbingly, the part of him that had apparently wanted Davros' attention in one way or another. Right now though, Romana had to come first. The Doctor concentrated on her, let nothing but reassurance flow through his voice.

"It did happen," she choked out. "In our minds. It wasn't them, it was me, it was - I didn't want it to happen!"

"Of course not, Romana. Romana," he put his arms around her shoulders, "it was an electrical impulse, stimulating parts of your brain that you might never access otherwise. It wasn't real, it wasn't even necessarily a fantasy." Even though it probably wasn't the best thing to say, he felt compelled to add, "And even if it were - what you fantasise about is not what you want to make real."

"I don't want that - bespectacled little monster anywhere near me!" she snarled, suddenly furious. "I want to get out of here, off this planet!"

The Doctor paused, and reached into his pocket. He pulled out the tiny metal cube of the Thal counter-jammer, and looked at it meditatively.

"If we turned this on," he said as though to himself, "the Thals might be able to hear us. Hear our thoughts. They might be able to ask that we be released." He scowled. "Not the ideal place to turn this on; Davros may detect it. But right now it seems like our best chance. I think we should concentrate, both of us. Concentrate on our being held prisoner; concentrate on Bettan. She gave me this, she can free us. She can get us out of here. Concentrate, Romana!"

Romana stared at the metal cube, and the Doctor did as well. They both stared, focussing their minds, as the Doctor pulled out the tiny green tab with a faint clicking sound.

As they sat and stared, the clicking sound was overcome by a rumbling, a shaking that suddenly rocked the cell and sent them both to the floor. There was a crashing and clattering apparently from the floor above them - several laboratories' worth of falling glassware perhaps? The Doctor shouted, but managed to cup the counter-jammer against his chest rather than fall on it. It felt like an earthquake, but…it had started just as he pulled the tab. Coincidence, or?

There was the wailing of an alarm, and the cell door sprung open automatically. The Doctor staggered to his feet and drew Romana up as well, and they tottered across the wobbling floor to the corridor - and then directly into the cell next down the line. Because there was another door open in the back of it, showing a narrow stone corridor.

"This way!" and the two prisoners ran. The stone corridor was narrow and dark, and their shoulders brushed against the walls on each side with a whispering sound. Much louder than that whispering sound was the distant bellowing of thunder - or explosions. And more explosions, loud and close - behind them. In the Bunker.

The corridor ended, and they found themselves in a dimly lit natural cave. The Doctor led the way, weaving through the stalactites and trying not to bash his head; Romana stayed close, afraid of losing him in the gloom. The air in the cave was cool and musty, but there was a hot breeze starting to come from somewhere behind them.

"Here!" the Doctor shouted, nearly charging headlong at a narrow passage barred with rusted metal. He swept the bars aside as though they were a curtain, turned to take Romana's hand. His face was alight with fear, and with a glowing orange light. He grabbed her and dragged her outside, fast, and immediately lunged to one side, away from the entrance to the cave.

That entrance suddenly belched fire and smoke in a thundering bellow; the hot stink of vaporised metal scorched their nostrils. Bits of rocks and debris flew through the air, smouldering. Romana needed no encouragement from the Doctor to scramble further away over the sandy soil.

"What was that?" said Romana, coughing. "Some sort of trap? Something to keep prisoners from escaping?" The two of them had stumbled further back, and suddenly Romana stopped, colliding with the Doctor's still back. She stepped around him, and looked up.

And up.

The landscape spread out in front of them, long rolling hills covered with trees and crops, and laced with roads. But they paid no attention to any of that, because the horizon was lit by a great column of fire.

It rose up out of the earth, piercing the clouds. It was so enormous that there was no way to judge its real size, to comprehend all of it at once. It burned bright enough to hurt the eyes with every colour of fire, and there were tiny flecks dancing around it. Ash? No. The flecks moved too tightly, not drifting like bits of ash but moving with purpose. And the pillar of fire was too distant for those flecks to be ash.

"Dal," said the Doctor. His voice was almost lost in the rolling thunder that radiated from the column of fire, throbbing like a heartbeat. Smoke and walls of flame were rising from the ground around the pillar, sweeping outwards in great rings as vegetation and buildings and roads ignited in the heat of the firestorm. "The city of the Daleks…gone." Then he looked to his right, and screamed "No!"

Romana looked, and screamed as well. The Kaled Dome was on fire, or rather, the city inside the Dome was on fire; even through the smoke and the translucent Dome material, the flickering lights were unmistakable. As they watched, horrified, the buildings started to totter and fall like sandcastles dried by the sun.

There was a whooshing noise from the suddenly smoky sky overhead, and the familiar metallic rattling of a Dalek voice. "Alien saboteurs are to be exterminated!" it shouted, and then the searing electronic screech of a disintegrator beam.

The Dalek fell near them, in two pieces; something wet and green might have flopped in one half of the casing for a moment, but then it was still.

A metal platform swooped out of the smoke, and a figure on top of it shouted in an amplified but familiar voice, "Send more forces to the north sector!"

The Doctor shouted, "Bettan!"

It was the Thal woman, Bettan; she was standing on the platform, wearing a heavy helmet bristling with electronic gear and a Thal military uniform. Her face turned to the Doctor with an impassive expression, as though she was staring at an inanimate object, not two frantic people.

"Bettan, what have you done?" The Doctor held out the counter-jammer in his hand as he demanded an explanation.

"Explosives have been smuggled into Kaled territory by our agents, and hidden throughout the Dome and Dal," she said, saying the words with an unnaturally calm finality. "Carefully disguised explosives, completely inert until they were detonated by a telepathic signal. When you activated our device, our signal could finally get through. Our forces have broken through the Bunker's shielding as well."

Suddenly and horribly, her face came alive with a single emotion: hate. She glared down at the two figures on the ground under her, but her shout was for her troops, thundering through the air overhead on their own flying platforms. "Advance and destroy! Butcher them all - down to the babies in their cradles! We want no Daleks, and no Kaleds! Skaro is a Thal planet now, now and forever!"

"Bettan, what are you doing!" the Doctor nearly screamed in frustration.

"There is no Bettan." She looked at him, empty cold eyes set into a blank face that looked as though it had never felt anything. Her voice was flat and somehow mechanical, the voice of a machine. "We are Thal. We are the many, who are one. We shall be one, only one! All who are not Thal must be destroyed!"

The Doctor's mouth hung open for a moment, as he realised what he faced was not a person anymore, but a part of a Thal group mind. "You said you didn't want to make war!"

"This is not war. This is extermination." She turned and gestured, and the flying disc soared away into the smoke.

The Doctor and Romana coughed, holding their scarves over their faces. "We have to get back to the TARDIS!" coughed the Doctor. "This way!" He threw the counter-jammer aside with a sudden expression of loathing, and they ran.

He had gone over this territory before, in the dark. Once he had been here when the entire landscape was drowned in poison-absorbing fungus. Keeping the mountain ranges to their left, and recalling their trip on the motorcycles, they found their way back to the orchard. The long rows of trees were scorched across their crowns, and the air was thick with the smell of burned fruit. Here and there were great deflated blobs of fungus like limp balloons, still struggling to reach and repair their broken trees. The travellers ran through falling leaves, showering down, the edges of some of them glowing with hot embers.

"Oh!" said Romana, and stopped; the Doctor turned and saw a splash of colour at her feet. A little red bird, dead, its mouth half-open.

"They aren't going to kill everything, are they?" she implored, looking up with huge eyes.

"They'll kill us if they catch us. We aren't Thal, after all. Come on, Romana!"

They ran, and two figures appeared in front of them. They were wearing green military uniforms - the Doctor recognised them as Thal - but their faces were blank ovals of metal. Robots. They raised their rifles, aiming directly at the Doctor and Romana.

The Doctor shouted out, "Disengage Code Proper-Storm!" The Thal robots froze; either the command was still functional or they were trying to evaluate it. In either case, the fugitives ran between them, and they did not move to pursue.

The goal was in sight now. The trees around the TARDIS were burned to charcoal; the reason for this focussed attack was clear after they picked their way over the fallen trunks. Here were Daleks- or the remains of them; shattered stumps, smashed as though by some giant's hammer. Smoke and the stench of burned flesh rose from them. But in the middle of their burnt casings was the TARDIS, unharmed. Of course.

They almost flew to the door, the Doctor juggling out his key. He had it in the lock, opened the door - and felt Romana suddenly jerk away. He turned to face disaster.

Romana was standing wide-eyed on tiptoe, and a black-gloved hand was twisted in her scarf, holding her still. The other hand was holding a compact and quite lethal energy blaster to Romana's head.

The owner of those hands was Esselle. Her face was reddened as though by sunburn - or fire. Fire, probably, considering how her hair seemed frizzled around the edges. Her eyes were bloodshot and running with tears, and those tears were not just from smoke. She shook as she spoke to the Doctor; her words that might have been dipped in poison, they stung so.

"So. You have finished your mission, Time Lord. Destroyed the Daleks, and destroyed us. All of us, everything we accomplished, everything we could have done here! All these Kaleds, all these wonderful, beautiful men and women that we saved from their war! We saved them, we healed them - and you killed them."

The Doctor stood, frozen in the doorway of the TARDIS. His eyes measured distances as he tried to figure out how to get Romana away from her captor. But he couldn't. Not unless someone else interceded, or Esselle moved.

He decided to bluff, for starters. "I had nothing to do with-"

"Lies!" she snarled, twisting Romana's scarf around her neck until she turned pink. "A signal was detected from the confinement level, and seconds later the explosions began. That's no coincidence, Doctor. You did this. You sent the signal, set the Thals loose on us. I ran out through one of the tunnels…they're all dead in there. The Prime, all the Elite." Every word was a sob now. "Davros. Nyder. All of them, dead. And it's all your fault!"

Abruptly she shoved Romana forward, into the Doctor's arms. He caught her, and they both stared as Esselle pointed at then with one trembling hand. The gun was hanging at her side in her other hand, ignored.

"Remember that, and remember me! For the rest of your lives, for all eternity, remember that you destroyed all of us, paid with our lives to destroy the Daleks. Because of your fear of a future that had not yet happened, a future that might never have happened! Remember me!" She spat, tears dripping from the line of her chin now, streaking the ash on her face. "And go!"

Speechless for once, the Doctor stepped backwards, taking Romana with him. The door to the TARDIS shut, and with a rumbling bellow it vanished.

# # #

After the TARDIS had been started on her randomised way, the Doctor did not stand at the controls; instead he sat on the floor, his head cocked a little to one side against the control panel, lost in thought.

Romana was facing away from him, carefully checking that all her clothes were in fact intact. When she looked back, she was shocked at the despair on his face.

"Was it worth it, Romana?" he asked, his voice sounding lost. "All the Reflectionists' work undone, the Thals triumphant, the Kaleds destroyed - but maybe not the Daleks. If the Daleks survive this, it will be only the most brutal and battle worthy individuals. And the Thals could lose all their Reflectionist-given technology in the battle, and more. Is everything I've done here just been to maintain the status quo, to recreate Skaro as it was meant to be?"

He shook his head back and forth. "Were the Daleks inevitable? Was there nothing I could do to divert them from their path? Or have I only made things worse? If they do survive, they will remember me, remember the Time Lords, as their enemy."

"We could go back and help-" suggested Romana a little desperately.

"No, Romana. What's done is done. If I ever return to Skaro, I expect I will find it as I did in the past: an irradiated wasteland, with a few Thal savages, and the Daleks supreme over all." He closed his eyes as he went on softly. "That's the future that I could never change, the future that was greater than myself. And I hate to think of the price the universe may pay for my failure."

Through the Void sailed the TARDIS, on and on, knowing no direction or destination.


	5. About Face

In a little burnt clearing in an orchard on Skaro, a woman was kneeling and crying. Her shoulders shook under her black uniform as she pictured the world around her: all her people's hard work undone, the Dome burned to a husk, the Bunker smashed, and Dal burnt to slag. And what could possibly lie before her in this situation except death?

Something moved into her field of vision, in the ashes that had replaced the grass.

A pair of black shiny military boots.

Commander Nyder's boots, to be exact.

With Commander Nyder in them.

"Bit overdone at the end there, but he seemed convinced," he said, helping Esselle up. She snuffled up her tears, hugely.

"It's called method acting, if you please," she said. "But I didn't want to go too far. I was worried he might try to rescue me."

"What, you don't want to go altruistically careening through all time and space with the Doctor?"

"Not without you," she answered, hugging him and paying no attention to the ash this left on his spotless uniform. Then she let go, leaned over and picked up a tiny metal ball out of the ashes; as she held it flat on the palm of her filthy torn glove, it rolled back and forth under its own power. "But the acting worked: the Doctor was distracted into holding the TARDIS door open. This means that one or more of Davros' probes will have got in."

"Get those smudge pots covered!" Nyder ordered, and men in military camouflage leaped to obey. With the smoke gone, the ground around them was revealed: clear crisp grass outside of the circle burnt around the TARDIS, and the arching branches of the untouched orchard overhead. A bird sang in the trees. Daleks moved in the distance, homing in on the departure site.

A motorcycle with a sidecar came rolling up to them, the wheels leaving wet streaks through the ashes. "Excellent, oh excellent!" said Davros, bringing the motorcycle to a halt. He was riding helmetless with heavy goggles shoved carelessly back on his forehead, and in the sidecar was a Thal, markedly pale.

"Davros," Esselle said, and paused. No point in nagging him about his safety equipment, he always ignored her. Instead she turned her attention to their guest.

"Are you all right, Master Telepath?" she asked the Thal politely. He hadn't been quite that pale in their earlier meetings, when this project had still been in its planning stages.

"Oh yes. This was worth any price." The telepath opened his blue eyes wide, and stared off into some invisible distance. "To see as I saw him. An alien mind, completely different from any I have ever touched before. So much intelligence and power, such complexity to his mind - to hold it all, to keep him off-balance, to let him see just enough of the real world but superimpose over that my illusions, that the Bunker and Dal and the Dome had been destroyed…I think these last few hours have been the greatest of my life, Davros. And I thank you."

"We could not have done it without you - not without considerable effort," Davros replied. "Thanks to your help, these props were enough to convince that what he was seeing was real, without risking that he might wander off-stage, as it were." He had dismounted, and was opening up one of the shattered Dalek casings; inside were not the remains of a Dalek, but tight bundles of scanning and recording equipment, put in place to capture information on the TARDIS' departure. "The recorders worked perfectly!" he gloated. "And all of the probes save one made it inside - well done, Esselle!"

She beamed, and then her eyes turned back to the Thal. "You have no trouble establishing the link during the interrogation?"

"No, not at all. And having me make the initial contact during the compatibility test was a stroke of genius-"

"Naturally," interrupted Davros.

"-because it put them just enough off balance that they never noticed I was influencing what they saw. When they activated what they thought was a counter-jammer, I took full control." The Thal's face turned sly. "Care to know all their deepest fantasies?"

"Were they of any interest?" Davros asked casually over his shoulder.

"Well, the Doctor definitely has some ambiguous feelings about you, Davros."

The Elite scientist coughed, and kept his eyes fixed in the analytical equipment.

"While Romana seemed to find Commander Nyder - intriguing."

"The Time Lady has taste," said Esselle approvingly. At the sound of a sniff, she looked at Davros, studied the way he looked down at nothing. His hands were mechanically sorting through the recording equipment, flipping switches and moving wires, but his eyes looked almost wistful.

"Is something wrong, Davros?" she asked.

"I hated to do that," he said, after a long pause. "To let them go, even though that was always a part of my plan. After I saw them walk through a stasis field - I think I would have done anything to keep them here. What I could have learned from them…."

Esselle shrugged. "You have the readings from our equipment, and whatever the probes bring back. Believe me, the Doctor is a very dangerous man to have about. It is better for all of us that he leaves and spreads the story that the Daleks and the Kaleds have been destroyed. And with a nice layer of guilt on top, to help distract him from picking at our illusions too closely."

"Perhaps." Davros pulled a blinking recording unit out of the false Dalek shell and frowned at it. "Perhaps it will be worth it - but statistically it is a very long shot. If the probes can establish themselves in the TARDIS without being detected, and if they can extract information about the Doctor and his home world, and if they can return to Skaro to download their information…perhaps."

"The Daleks are working on the fourth generation of their ship model. Their time travel experiments are proceeding ahead of schedule. When will we be ready?" asked Nyder.

The Daleks suddenly rotated their eyestalks upwards, as though they had sensed something. There was a tiny streak of light by Davros's ear, and a hissing noise. He looked down, and saw a wisp of steam rising from the scorched soil underfoot. With just the tip of his toe, he dug. Esselle and Nyder and the Daleks moved closer, watching, as he unearthed a tiny silver metal sphere. It steamed in the soil, perhaps from atmospheric friction, perhaps from some other form of transport. It could have travelled a thousand light-years, or ten thousand years, to return to its maker with its precious burden of knowledge.

The Daleks moved closer, their sensors scanning the probe. Davros stared down at the little silver ball, and touched it with his foot. "Soon," he said.

Kaleds and Daleks, they all looked up, hungry-eyed, at the sky and the stars beyond that would be theirs. Soon.

* * *

**NOTES ON THE TALE:**

At last, we have a perfectly rational reason for Commander Nyder to wear leather trousers! And ride a motorcycle!

The giant white spheres that tend the Kaled orchards remind me of The Village.

"Don't want to do like poor Isadora" - Isadora Duncan broke her neck when her long scarf was entangled in the back wheel of her car.

K-9, in this story, is actually K-9 Mark II, who has never been on Skaro before; this is why the signal being broadcast to him has no effect.

Councilman Mogran is a character briefly seen in 'Genesis of the Daleks', as an opponent to Davros' political power.

'Dalek named Omega' - In 'The Evil of the Daleks', the Second Doctor infused several Daleks with human traits, and named them Alpha, Beta and Omega. These Daleks returned to Skaro and raised considerable havoc.

The Third Doctor, in 'Invasion of the Dinosaurs,' managed to walk through a time-reversal field in order to turn it off. I have extended this premise to say that Time Lords can move through time stasis fields.

"Disengage Code Proper-Storm" - Bettan shouts this to stop Thal robots in my story 'Doctor Who and the Dawn of the Daleks.'


End file.
